An Orthodox Historian Finally
Acknowledges:
There is No Evidence for Nazi Gas Chambers

By ROBERT
FAURISSON

Robert Faurisson was educated at the Paris
Sorbonne, and served as a professor at the University of Lyon in
France from 1974 until 1990. He was a specialist of text and document
analysis. His writings on the Holocaust issue have appeared in four
books and numerous scholarly articles, many of which have been
published in this Journal.

This essay is a translation and adaptation
of a text written in September 1996. We regret the delay in
publishing it.

An Orthodox Historian Finally
Acknowledges:
There is No Evidence for Nazi Gas Chambers

ROBERT FAURISSON

Born in 1939, Jacques Baynac is a French
historian who is the author of several books. 1
A scholar whose sympathies lean to the left, he harbors a definite
hostility toward revisionists (whom he calls "deniers"), and
particularly toward revisionist writer and publisher Pierre Guillaume
and myself. For years he affirmed the existence of Nazi homicidal gas
chambers.

In 1996, though, Baynac acknowledged in two
lengthy articles published in a Swiss daily newspaper that, taking
everything into account, one is forced to admit -- even if it is "as
painful to say as it is to hear" -- that the well-known "testimonies"
are not sufficient proof of wartime homicidal gas chambers, and that
it is simply not possible to prove, scientifically, that the
homicidal gas chambers actually existed.

Given this lack of any direct proof, he
continued, it will now be necessary to seek an indirect proof.
Because one cannot prove that Nazi gas chambers existed, he goes on
to write, it will instead be necessary to prove that it is impossible
that they did not exist! Specifically, he writes: "If scholarly
history cannot, because of the lack of documentation, establish the
reality of a fact, it can, by means of documentation, establish that
the unreality of this fact is itself unreal." 2

Baynac made these remarkable statements in
two lengthy articles published in the Swiss newspaper Le Nouveau
Quotidien de Lausanne, September 2, 1996 (p. 16), and September 3,
1996 (p. 14).

The Evasion of
Historians

In the first of these two articles, Baynac
begins by deploring France's anti-revisionist "Fabius-Gayssot" law of
July 13, 1990, which he says allows "the deniers' sect" to use the
courts as podiums for their views. He notes that this law has been
criticized by Claude Imbert of Le Point magazine, historian Pierre
Vidal-Naquet (who has said: "I am ready to kill Faurisson, but not to
pursue him in a court of law!"), Madeleine Rebérioux (former
president of the "Human Rights League"), anti-revisionist attorney
Charles Korman, and several parliamentary deputies of the Gaullist
RPR party.

Baynac affirms that the revisionists/deniers
have plenty of reason for rejoicing, especially since the Abbé
Pierre affair "changed the atmosphere" in their favor. Baynac also
notes that among the anti-revisionists, "disarray has given way to
consternation," that historian Pierre Vidal-Naquet "is grieved," that
the prominent French-Jewish intellectual Bernard-Henri Lévy
"is beside himself," that Pierre-André Taguieff "is
frightened," and that the front cover of an issue of the French
magazine L'Événement du jeudi ("The Thursday Event")
proclaimed "The Victory of the Revisionists."

Baynac denounces Jorge Semprun, an
intellectual and former deportee, for having irresponsibly "murdered"
a book by Florent Brayard that attacks French revisionist writer Paul
Rassinier. Baynac believes that among Leftists there has come into
being a "paranoia," a "witch-hunt" (in the words of
Jean-François Kahn), and a "disastrous chaos." He notes that
Simone Veil and Dominique Jamet share his dislike of the
Fabius-Gayssot law, and that "one refuses to debate" the
revisionists.

Baynac recalls the declaration by "34
reputable historians" published in the prominent French daily Le
Monde on February 21, 1979 - a stupefying declaration that responded
to but did not answer my challenge, which had appeared earlier in the
paper, calling for an explanation of how, technically, the magical
Nazi gas chambers were supposed to have operated. In this regard,
Baynac writes of the "evasion" of historians in general, and goes on
to declare that "the historians have retreated."

Neither Documents, Traces,
Nor Proofs

In the second of his two articles, Baynac
deplores the fact that anti-revisionist historians have trusted
Jean-Claude Pressac, a pharmacist and "amateur historian," who now
concludes that the number of Jewish and non-Jewish dead at Auschwitz
amounts "to a total of 600,000 victims." 3
Baynac derides historian François Bayrou, France's Minister of
National Education, who, conscious of the difficulties in trying to
prove the "Holocaust" genocide and wartime homicidal gas chambers,
advocates recourse to a "less burdened" historical method. Baynac
sees in this a "light historical concept."

Baynac believes that Nazi gas chambers
existed, but thinks that those who have tried to prove their
existence have overly employed an "ascientific" methodology, rather
than a "scientific" one. In this "ascientific" method, he goes on,
"testimony prevails," while in the "scientific" method documents
prevail. However, he adds with regret, one is able only to ascertain
"the absence of documents, traces, or other material proofs."
4

Baynac recalls the admission made in 1988 by
Jewish-American historian Arno Mayer, who teaches at Princeton
University: "Sources for the study of the gas chambers are at once
rare and unreliable." 5
Baynac goes on to say that "we do not have available indispensable
elements for a normal undertaking of the historical method," and that
"one must remain silent for lack of documents." He concludes with a
remarkable concession: "it is necessary to recognize that the lack of
traces involves the inability to directly establish the reality of
the existence of homicidal gas chambers." 6
When he writes "the lack of traces," he means, as already mentioned,
"the absence of documents, traces, or other material
proofs."

Proofs for
Tomorrow?

Baynac's study concludes with the
suggestion, already mentioned: because it is decidedly impossible to
prove that the gas chambers existed, let us try in the future to
prove that these gas chambers were not able not to have
existed!

This is an example of admitting a
present-day inadequacy while postulating an act of faith for the
future. Baynac is naive. He believes that because so many historians
have emphatically affirmed the reality of the "Holocaust" horrors and
the homicidal gas chambers, and so many survivors have claimed to
have seen them, therefore they undoubtedly existed. He does not
realize that, with time, one discovers that the writing of history is
full of histories that are more or less imaginary.

He continues to believe in the gas chambers,
just as he seems to persist in believing in Communism. Tomorrow, one
will find proof for these gas chambers. Tomorrow, Communism will be
true. Tomorrow, one will get a free lunch. Tomorrow, one will finally
have the proof that National Socialism is the incarnation of evil and
that Communism is the incarnation of good. Let's hear it for the
eternal credulity of the French intelligentsia!

Baynac joins, as it were, the "34 reputable
historians" who, as already mentioned, in 1979 published one of the
most monumental pieces of nonsense of French academic life: "It is
not necessary to ask oneself how, technically, such a mass murder was
possible. It was technically possible because it happened." Baynac
thus adds his name to those of the 34 orthodox scholars who, without
intending it, were obliged to agree with the revisionist historians
on several important issues. This inevitably raises a question: how
can judges continue to condemn revisionists for contesting a crime
that, as Baynac now acknowledges, has not been proven?

Embarrassing Gas
Chambers

It is quite clear that the "Nazi gas
chambers" are ever more embarrassing for those who uphold the
"Holocaust" thesis of Jewish extermination. As early as 1984, Pierre
Vidal-Naquet warned friends who were already attempting to abandon
the "gas chambers" that to do so would be "to capitulate in open
country" 7
And in 1987 a periodical hostile to revisionism published a letter by
two French-Jewish teachers, Ida Zajdel and Marc Ascione, suggesting
that the Nazis had faked their confessions, and only mentioned gas
chambers in order to plant "a delayed action 'bomb' against the Jews,
an instrument of diversion and, why not, of blackmail."
8

There are many other examples worth citing,
but I will content myself here with citing just three recent ones:
that of Elie Wiesel (in 1994), that of a Dutch professor of
Jewish-Polish origin, Michel Korzec (in 1995), and finally, that of
the Jewish-American historian Daniel Jonah Goldhagen (in
1996):

In 1994, Wiesel wrote in his memoir, All
Rivers Run to the Sea: "Let the gas chambers remain closed to
prying eyes, and to imagination." 9
In plain English this means: "Let's not try to see, or even
imagine, a Nazi gas chamber." What follows inevitably from this is
that Wiesel is quite skeptical of the alleged witnesses who,
supposedly, have described what happened in the gas chambers.

In 1995 Michel Korzec declared that too
much emphasis has been put on the gas chambers and the number of
gassing victims. With dialectic contortions worthy of a cabalist,
he went on to argue that it was the Germans, and not the Jews, who
are responsible for this error. In Korzec's view, many more
Germans participated in the "mass murder" of Jews than has been
assumed, and in many more places across Europe -- many more than
the small number of Germans supposedly involved in gas chamber
killings of Jews. 10

In his 1996 study, Hitler's Willing
Executioners, an exceedingly anti-German work, Daniel J. Goldhagen
wrote: "Gassing was really epiphenomenal to the Germans' slaughter
of Jews." 11
And in a 1996 interview with a major Austrian weekly news magazine
he stated: "For me the industrialized annihilation of the Jews is
not the central question in explaining the Holocaust ... The gas
chambers are a symbol. But it is absurd to believe that the
Holocaust would not have taken place without the gas chambers."
12

So, by 1996 the gas chambers had become a
symbol!

A Swiss Newspaper Sets An
Example

In recent years I have described at various
times, in samizdat essays and in interviews recorded by Ernst
Zündel in Canada, this evolution by the "exterminationists"
regarding the "Nazi gas chambers." In a text I wrote on September 22,
1993 (and which I intend to publish in my forthcoming book), I
predicted that one day organized Jewry eventually would be obliged to
give up the lie about Nazi gas chambers, while at the same time still
insisting that "the Holocaust" is an irrefutable truth. Consistent
with this, the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, has
decided not to provide any physical representation of a German
homicidal gas chamber (except for a door of a delousing gas chamber
and an absurd and "artistic" model). 14

The two 1996 articles by Jacques Baynac in
the Swiss daily paper are only a stage in this metamorphosis of
official historiography. Baynac's articles confirm that, for quite
some time now, historians have broken with the facade of unanimity.
Step by step, historians are rejecting the simplistic conclusions of
the Nuremberg Tribunal regarding gas chambers and
genocide.

When French judges declare that challenging
the existence of Nazi gas chambers is to challenge "crimes against
humanity" (which the genocide of the Jews would have been), they are
correct. However, if there is no longer any proof of a specific
murder weapon, logically there is no longer any proof of a specific
crime. This conclusion, rather embarrassing for the judges who dare
to condemn revisionism, follows inevitably from the position taken by
Baynac, a position that, once again, is not in any way peculiar to
him but represents a general trend in orthodox historiography. Baynac
is simply saying out loud what his colleagues have been thinking in
silence.

In publishing these two articles by Baynac,
Le Nouveau Quotidien of Lausanne, normally so hostile toward
revisionism, has shown both discernment and respect for its readers.
15

Jacques Baynac: "There are no
proofs, yet I believe."

Robert Faurisson: "There are no proofs,
therefore I refuse to believe."

For the first: freedom of
expression.

For the second: a sentence of one month
to one year of prison, a fine of 2,000 to 300,000 francs, and
additional penalties.

3. This is quite a drop
from the figure of 9,000,000 given in the widely-viewed film
"Night and Fog," or 4,000,000 as established by the Nuremberg
Tribunal and as inscribed until 1990 on plaques at the monument at
the Auschwitz camp site (where since 1995 the new figure is
1,500,000).

14. During a visit to the
US Holocaust Memorial Museum on August 30, 1994, I met with the
Museum's Research Director, Michael Berenbaum. He told me, in the
presence of witnesses, that "the decision had been made not to
present any physical representation of a Nazi gas chamber." See
also: R. Faurisson, "The US Holocaust Memorial Museum: A
Challenge," July-August 1993 Journal, pp. 14-17; "Gas Chamber Door
Fraudulently Portrayed at US Holocaust Museum," September-October
1993 Journal, p. 39; and, R. Faurisson, "Auschwitz: Facts and
Legend," July-August 1997 Journal, pp. 16-17.

15. In the Baynac article
in the September 2 issue of Le Nouveau Quotidien, p. 16, there are
three minor errors: in the second column, one should read "Florent
Brayard" (instead of "Florent Rassinier"); in the third column,
"Jean-François Kahn" (in place of "Khan"); and, in the
forth column, "Il ne faut pas se demander comment techniquement
...," instead of "Il ne faut pas se demander si techniquement
...," or, "It is not necessary to ask oneself how" (instead of
"ask oneself if").

"Holocaust: The
Revisionists' Victory"
proclaims the French establishment weekly
magazine L''Evenement du jeudi ("The Thurs-
day Event") on the front cover of its issue of
June 27-July 3, 1996. This issue appeared
during the national furor over a scholarly
revisionist study by Roger Garaudy, Les
mythes fondateurs de la politique israélienne
("The Founding Myths of Israeli Politics"),
and the support he received from a widely
respected priest, Abbé Pierre (also shown
on the magazine's front cover).